Reverend Trevor Gribben:

People traditionally walk out when I speak. We are used to this in the North also.

It would be great if there were shared education practitioners down here. Michelle Gildernew would point towards the Fermanagh Trust for particular reasons. I commend the trust and encourage the committee to listen to it. The other two big providers in the area of shared education are the Queen's University shared education programme under Professor Tony Gallagher and the North-Eastern Education and Library Board PIEE scheme which deals with primary schools. These three together will give the committee a brilliant picture of the potential of shared education to change education and build reconciliation in Northern Ireland, if the committee takes cognisance of their work.

Deputy Martin Ferris referred to areas in Dublin which were equally deprived as those in Belfast. I accept that fully. The point I wish to make is that owing to the impact of the Troubles, the opportunities to rebuild and rejuvenate whole communities following the decline of traditional industries were not seized and put back by 30 years. The work that should have been done in the 1970s and 1980s to rebuild communities could not happen and did not happen because of the Troubles. Therefore, they are much further behind.

I fully accept that the churches have shown sectarian attitudes and that they have got it wrong. We share this with most people in society in Northern Ireland. As Dr. Hamilton said, as we try to move forward we need to be honest about this fact.

Early years education is vital. The Dawn Purvis report contains super recommendations. People like Dawn Purvis, Pete Shirlow and Mark Langhammer are the experts and we are happy to listen to them. It is most important to build and incentivise leadership in education in inner city schools. It is much better to be a principal in a grammar school in the suburbs than it is to be a principal in a difficult secondary school in the inner city. We need to incentivise leadership in education in schools. The CCMS and our Catholic colleagues have been good at doing this, but it tends not to have happened in the controlled schools. We need to build capacity in schools in order that pupils and parents will want to go to these schools and will not want to flee them to go to schools in the suburbs. The issue of academic selection needs to be dealt with, but it will not be dealt with by confrontation. Sadly, I do not see a solution to the dispute coming in Northern Ireland in the next few years. We need to find ways of living with the reality and for both sides to stop the aggressive confrontational attitudes towards each other. We need to find a way forward to live with the reality of academic selection until we can get rid of it.